​​I LOVE the internet – but it doesn’t always love me.

It’s early January and Janet and I take a four-day Lake District break in Keswick.

We both adore the lovely town on the banks of Derwentwater, surrounded by spectacular mountains.

Halfway through our mini holiday we decide to visit the Beatrix Potter Museum, so I Google it and discover it ‘opens at 10am.

Then I programme my trusty sat nav and we set off.

I must admit I’m ‘capped’ by the extreme narrowness of the roads as we leave Ambleside and head for Hill Top Farm.

To make matters worse, Wednesday must be local bin day because every couple of miles we have to squeeze past a dustbin lorry coming the other way.

By the time we reach the hamlet of Near Sawrey (that really is its name) Janet and I are both in a lather, especially when the sat nav directs us down an unmade track.

I’m forced to try and put my super driving skills into practise, but my three-point turn-in-the-track is more redolent of a scene from ChuckleVision.

“Have it,” I say, triumphantly, as I leave the track without a scratch and finally park outside the late Ms Potter’s museum. But the big sign on the gate reads: ‘CLOSED FOR THE WINTER’.

Bugger!

“I know,” I announce, “to nearby Kendal we will go and see the birthplace of Jack Reacher.”

I tap in the new postcode but after 20 more minutes of horrendous navigating, the sat nav directs us to the very brink of Lake Windermere. Only an emergency stop and blue tyre smoke, prevents disaster. It takes us five minutes to recover.

After another virtuoso u-turn, we head away from the lake and wait for the satellite navigator to recalibrate.

But, again, the road it takes us down is wedge-shaped.

“From now on I’m disconnecting this flaming thing and trusting my own navigational skills.”

Janet says nothing but raises a single eyebrow as I enter the sloping driveway of a very posh home in order to turn around yet again.

To exit I have to, first, reverse down a tarmac incline. Then, as I try to pull forward I find there’s no traction and my car slides backwards on the black ice.

The dry-stone perimeter wall looms ominously in my rear-view mirror. I slam on the brakes but, as I try to move forward again, we slide backwards a further yard.

“Haven’t you got any sand-grit?” asks Janet.

“Yeah, of course I have. I’m not stupid, you know. I just happen to have left it in my garden shed at home.”

I’m thinking, maybe we’re going to have to abandon the car and return when the thaw arrives in spring. However, I needn’t have worried because on the third attempt, minimal grip is established and slowly, very slowly, the car moves forward.

“Piece o’ cake,” I boast, as I wind down the window to let some cold air in.

The 15-minute drive to Kendal takes a good half hour.

“Just remind me... why is it you’re keen to visit Kendal?” asks Janet.

“Well, it’s a smashing town for a start, but I want to see the Jack Reacher plaque in Asda.”

“You’ll not mind if I use the facilities first and then have a coffee?”

I sit impatiently drumming my fingers on our cafe table when Janet asks, “How come the fictional character, Jack Reacher, was born here in Kendal’s Asda, anyway?”

I explain: “When the unpublished author, Lee Child, was dreaming up his book franchise that would eventually make him a multi-millionaire, he needed a name for his hero. And as he and his wife, Jane, were shopping in this very supermarket, she noticed how little old ladies were asking her six-foot-four husband, to reach for goods off the top shelf.

So, Jane said to him, with mischief in her eyes: ‘If your writing ambitions bomb, you can always become a reacher in a supermarket.’

For Lee Child, this was a light-bulb moment. “Reacher’s the perfect surname for my fictional hero,” he said.

Despite the trouble caused by the World wide blooming web, I still feel fairly satisfied when we get back to the Keswick Hotel that evening.